In recent years, improvements of CMOS technology have led to an enormous down-scaling of MOS field-effect transistors (FETs). MOSFET devices with channel lengths less than about 10 nanometers (nm) have been demonstrated. However, besides fabrication-related progress, generally in the form of reduced device geometries, power consumption of highly integrated circuits is becoming more critical, particularly as the demand for high-performance, low-power devices increases. In this respect, the limitation of any conventional FETs to a minimum subthreshold swing, S, of 60 millivolts per decade (mV/dec) at room temperature becomes a major obstacle to further reduce the operational voltage while leaving an on/off-ratio of the devices constant.
In a MOSFET device, the minimum voltage swing needed to switch the device from an “on” state to an “off” state is an important figure of merit for determining low power performance of the device. This characteristic is usually quantified by measuring how many millivolts (mV) it takes to change the drain current in the device by one order of magnitude, i.e. one decade of current on a logarithmic scale. The measure of this characteristic is called the inverse subthreshold slope and is given in units of mV/decade of current change. In a MOSFET device, the subthreshold swing is limited by thermal voltage, kT/q, where k is Boltzmann's constant (1.38×10−23 J/°K), T is temperature in degrees Kelvin (°K), and q is the charge of an electron (1.60×10−19 C). This thermal voltage is about 26 mV at room temperature (e.g., about 300°K), and hence S=kT/q ln(10)≈60 mV/dec.
Provided a certain ratio between the off-state and the on-state current of approximately three orders of magnitude is required and if we assume that two thirds of the maximum applied gate voltage is needed to obtain a high on-state current, one needs at least a gate voltage range of about 3×(3·60)=540 mV to properly operate the device. In turn this means that scaling down the supply voltage of devices limited to a subthreshold swing of 60 mV/dec leaves only two options: either the off-state leakage is increased or the on-state performance is deteriorated. Accordingly, transistor devices that show an inverse subthreshold slope significantly steeper than 60 mV/dec and still provide a high on-state performance are particularly desirable.